


Safe Spaces

by exbex



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bullying, Character Study, Gen, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:42:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7154024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exbex/pseuds/exbex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Check Please! belongs to Ngozi Ukazu</p>
    </blockquote>





	Safe Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> Check Please! belongs to Ngozi Ukazu

There are worse places to be than the closet. It’s dark, and a little cold, and it doesn’t smell all that great, but it could be worse. Even at the age of twelve, Eric knows this.

After all, they could have beaten him up. They could have stayed, and taunted him. There are worse things than being left alone. 

He is only twelve years old, but Eric knows that there are worse things than loneliness.

Unfortunately, he has a lot of time to figure this out. His backpack is on the other side of the door, and he can’t even call his mother. He’s afraid she’s going to be worried sick when she calls and he doesn’t answer, but then he remembers that she thinks that he’s going to be at Dylan’s all night, so the phone isn’t going to ring.

The panic that hits him then is the worst feeling ever. Until it’s not.

The panic subsides when he realizes that someone is going to figure out where he is eventually. He won’t go home tomorrow, and phone calls will be made, and questions will be asked, and people will look for him, and the truth will come out. So Eric is able to skip right over despair, and straight into anger. Eric is only twelve, and so he doesn’t quite understand why that anger includes anger at himself and anger at his parents and anger at the whole world instead of just the football team. And that anger is suddenly the new worst feeling ever. Because Eric is only twelve, but somehow he knows that this kind of anger is poisonous. So he clamps it down, and doesn’t let any of that poison in.

A little seeps through anyway.

His mother’s tears the next day preemptively repair any rift that threatens to develop between them. His father’s silence the next day means that Eric will stop calling him ‘Dad’ and start calling him ‘Coach.’ (Later, Eric will realize that he misinterpreted that silence, but now, Eric is only twelve years old).

Eric does his science project on hermit crabs that year. They remind him of himself, because he can’t become hard, not really, but over the next few years he’ll develop a habit of finding shells to fit into (figure skating is naturally a solitary sport, his hockey team is made up of kids from different schools, and for all of the hate on the internet, vlogging is a perfect activity because no one can actually get to him through a computer screen). He and Mama and Coach move away, and Eric spends the next few years telling himself half-truths about why he doesn’t develop any close friendships (because he’s different, people don’t understand him, his father is the small-town football coach and he doesn’t have a lot of room to be himself). 

He doesn’t admit to himself that he pushes people away until he decides to apply to Samwell University. Because loneliness is okay, until it isn’t.


End file.
